What is weird is that I -had- this working with OpenMW 0.43 -- then I added a ton of mods, and now it doesn't work anymore, and I can't even get it working when there are no other mods installed. It's bugging the crap out of me

I think the reason he dont use/support OpenMW now is because how heavily modded his current game is. Most of the mods is not yet supported by OpenMW so it would be a drastic and major overhaul to his current Morrowind setup. From his videos, its seems that he is very connected and used to the mods, he can't let go of it, just for OpenMW.~

I do think post-1.0 trying to make huge modlists work better should be a priority as that will be of immense importance for some people, including mod makers and other important people in the community, to convert to OpenMW.